05 Mar CREATING CONNECTIVITY

The materials interconnect and tell a story: There is cloth dyed by hand with cochineal, sumac, and Osage orange trees. There are beads — there must be beads, for beads are the beating heart of this art — made of wood and glass, of bronze, nickel, and brass. There are faceted rubies and raw diamonds. And there are ant rocks — tiny pebbles gathered one by one from the top of an ant hill. These are just some of the ingredients that bring Sons of the Sun — a 6- by 8-foot panel depicting a Kiowa mother and her two children — to life. Each of these materials comes from the Earth, and the piece seems to hum not only with Earth’s vitality, but with that of the artist who made it.

Deer Woman as Lady Luck | Czech Cut Glass Beads, Heeled Shoes | 10 x 9.5 x 3.5 inches | 2004 | Collection of the British Museum

Teri Greeves, a Kiowa beadworker, exudes strength and passion. Both qualities are palpable even over the phone as she discusses her work from her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “Every single thing I put into a piece, I have an idea of where it came from, what its purpose is, and how it’s going to contribute to the narrative and the energy of that piece,” she says.

Sons of the Sun | Night Panels: Sumac dyed Hemp Silk, Wood Beads, Fire Polish 4mm Czech Preciosa Glass Beads, Pressed Glass Leaves, Nishikiito Metallic Thread, Faceted Thai Copper, Bronze, Nickle, Brass Beads: Swarovski Crystals, Faceted Goldstone, Faceted Ruby Zoisite, Raw Diamonds, Spider Panels: Cochineal Dyed Hemp Silk, 11/0 Charlotte Cut Beads, 11/0 Vintage Faceted Glass Beads, 13/0 Charlotte Cut Beads, Faceted Thai Copper Beads, Faceted Ruby Zoisite, Ant Rocks, Sun Panel: Osage Orange (Bodark) Dyed Hemp Silk, German Silver; 6mm Preciosa Czech Faceted Glass Beads, 4mm Preciosa Czech Faceted Glass Beads, 6mm Preciosa Czech Pressed Glass Beads, Trade Beads, Glass Hairpipes, Bone Hairpipes, 6mm Obsidian Beads, Drusy Agate Bead, 4mm Faceted Thai Nickel, Brass Beads, Swarovski Crystals, Tin Cones: 4mm Faceted Ruby Zoisite, 4mm Red Jasper, 4mm Obsidian, 4mm Pressed Glass Beads, Ant Rocks, Cast Sterling and 24k Gold Plated Ants by Keri Ataumbi | 6 x 8 x 2.5 inches | 2024

Greeves does her own natural dyeing using plants that come from places where the Kiowa people have lived. Though currently based in Oklahoma, where they were forced to relocate in the 1860s, the tribe historically had a presence in what is now known as Northern Montana and gradually migrated south, making their way along the Rocky Mountains. “I’m not a master dyer by any means,” she says of the radiant underpaintings on which her intricate beadwork shimmers, “but the natural world is absolutely a part of my work, and that is on purpose: That’s a link we all have, but many of us fail to remember. We are on this land, and we are of this land, and we are nothing but stardust ourselves.”

Coming Out/Emergence | Charmeuse Silk, Black Hollyhock Dye, Juniper Root Dye, Ant Rocks, 10/0 Metallic Seed Beads, 10/0 Seed Beads, 10/0 Cut Beads, 10/0 Vintage Venetian Beads, 24K Gold Hex Beads, Antique Glass Disc Beads, Swarovski Crystal Montees, Metal Prong Back Settings, Seed Pearls, Faceted Modolite Garnet Beads, Round Garnet Beads, Faceted Color Change Garnet Beads, 4mm Faceted Garnet Beads, Faceted Moss Agate Beads, “Disco” Mixed Faceted Gemstone Beads, Sterling Silver Beads, Faceted Topaz Beads, Faceted Spinel Beads, Matte Onyx Beads, Faceted Smokey Quartz Beads | 36 x 30 x 2 inches | 2022 | Collection of the First Americans Museum

Greeves has been beading for almost as long as she has been stardust in human form; she started at the age of 8, having been taught by her grandmother, Suzy Big Eagle, a woman who earned her living as a field worker, dishwasher, and cleaning lady but who was “always beading,” Greeves says, and “always an artist.” Greeves is equally influenced by her mother, Jeri Ah-be-hill, who owned a trading post and had expert knowledge and understanding of beadwork as well as other forms of Indigenous art and their histories. In the case of beadwork, that history involved a synthesis of claiming and creativity, as Native tribes reimagined the possibilities of a material that came with colonization and transformed it into a medium for storytelling. “Beads are not traditional Native materials,” Greeves explains. “They are a European import that was a trade material. But in our hands, in Native hands, man, there’s nothing more Kiowa than a Kiowa woman working with beads.”

The Future Looks Bright | Osage Orange Dyed Hemp Silk, 6mm Czech Glass Beads, Snow Obsidian Beads, Serpentine Beads, Hand-Stamped German Silver | 36 x 48 x 2.5 inches | 2024 | Private Collection

Until recently, Greeves explains, when measured against a Euro- and male-centric definition of art, beadwork was seen as a feminine hobby rather than legitimate fine art. “Beads have historically been seen as ‘craft work,’” she says, “as ‘women’s work,’ and they have been discounted. When I started, I was considered a craft worker, [as if] I made cutesy-pie little tchotchke things.” But she has noticed a shift during her lifetime and believes the American art world has expanded its formerly “narrow construct of what art is or isn’t. I’m experiencing it as an artist, and my peers and I are getting recognition. Years ago, this was not so.” It helped that Greeves won Best in Show at the Santa Fe Indian Market back in 1999, only her second year as a participant. Her work has since received numerous other awards, is part of collections in more than two dozen museums, and is steadily exhibited. Last year, she was featured in The New York Times. Helping to shift beadwork’s reputation from “craft” to fine art has been a labor of love for Greeves; each of her pieces is born from an intense process of conceptualization, research, gathering, and physical work.

“Initially there’s a lot of thinking,” she says, “because I’m conceptualizing it. And with that comes research about all the things I don’t understand. Like during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I did a lot of pieces about American politics and about war in general, including wars among Kiowa people; there was a lot of stuff I didn’t know and had to look up. There’s a ton of that kind of research, and then the drawings start happening, the composition part of it. Then I start thinking about the materiality of the piece — what will it include, and do I have enough of this color or that color on hand? And then there’s the dye work. Then, when I finally get the piece ready to go, that’s when I turn on Netflix and listen to books on tape, and I just start the actual act of beading, of sewing those beads down. That is when it is meditative.”

She Loved Her People | Raw Silk, Canvas, Wood, Glass Beads, Wood Beads, Mother of Pearl | 80 x 36 inches | 2011 | Collection of the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR

The fruits of this process are what Jordan Poorman Cocker, Curator of Indigenous Art at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, aptly terms “gleaming beaded works” that are “instantly recognizable.” Greeve’s art, Cocker says, “creates a beautiful moment of connection and celebration of Native American histories and women … She honors the past through her figurative and abstract symbolism while redefining what we know about America through cross-cultural references.”

For all their beauty, Greeve’s pieces do not shy away from the ugliness, pain, loss, and layers of lives embedded in American history. She Loved Her People depicts a 16-year-old Cheyenne girl who had a fiercely visceral encounter with General Custer. Her pieces are celebratory as well. Coming Out/Emergence portrays the Kiowa people’s emergence in this world. 21st Century Traditional: Beaded Tipi shows a true-to-life blend of traditional and contemporary Kiowa culture. And sometimes, there’s an element of playfulness and humor in Greeve’s work, which is as intentional as her selection of materials.

Sovereign Citizen | Size 13 Cut Beads, Size 10 Seed Beads, Glass Beads, Brain-Tanned Deer Hide, Cotton Cloth | 14 x 11 inches | 2008 | Collection of Craft in America

“There are two methods that I use in my work,” she says. “Number one is beauty: It’s beautiful, it’s shiny, it’s sparkly. Number two is humor, and the humor comes from working with those shoes.” Those shoes are the canvas high-heeled sneakers Greeves stumbled across on eBay back in the ’90s, which she promptly bought and beaded. The first time she showed a pair of them in her booth at the Santa Fe Indian Market, she put them in the sun where she knew they would sparkle. “People kept walking up to my booth, completely drawn in because of those shoes, and they were laughing, giggling, and pointing at them. And I remember at the time, because I was dealing with serious stories in my work — like the genocide of Native people — I was so offended by people’s laughing. And then I realized, ‘This is actually a tool.’ Humor,” she continues, “allows me to open up the audience, so they can then grasp something a little more serious.”

This juxtaposition is evident in the shoes titled Deer Woman as Lady Luck. Greeves explains, “Deer Woman comes in the dark of night, when the men are drinking, and they’re fuzzy-eyed, and they can’t see nothing. She’s pretty on top, and they dance with her all night long. And in that morning light, when they’ve been tapped out, she goes clackity-clack off into the sunrise.” With her dual nature, Greeves says, Deer Woman expresses the boom-or-bust nature of tribal casinos, which greatly enhance the quality of life while having profoundly negative consequences.

One bead at a time, Greeves explores the subjects and stories that affect not only Native people but all people. “At the bottom line, beadwork is connectivity to me. Connectivity to my people, to my family, my mother, my grandmother … to all the people that I’m able to provide beadwork for, all the tribal members, to the people that I sell it to, and the institutions that purchase it from me, and the larger community of Americans that I get to speak to. It’s all about connectivity. Because of beadwork, I participate as a part of the human species.”

Home to an intricate assemblage of interconnected materials, each of her pieces reaches equally interconnected viewers. It’s a practice Greeves aims to persist in for as long as her body will allow. “I want to bead,” she says with characteristic passion, “until I’m blind.”